‘We didn’t think ‘Back to the Future’ looked plausible — or good”: Huey Lewis and news about the power of love | Pop and rock

Huey Lewis, songwriter, vocals

Steven Spielberg and Bob Zemeckis asked to meet us, along with Bob Gale and Neil Canton. They said they just wrote this movie whose main character was a guy named Marty McFly, whose favorite band was Huey Lewis and the News. They asked: How about writing a song for the movie? I said, “I’m flattered, but I don’t necessarily know how to write for the movies. And frankly, I wouldn’t like to write a song called Back to the Future.” They said, “No problem. We just want one of your songs.” I said, “Tell you what, we’ll send you the next thing we’re working on.”

Chris Hayes, our guitarist and songwriter, had already written a chord progression, which he recorded on tape, and gave it to me. I was going through a running phase and was jogging one day when the lyrics to the song came to me. We sent them the demo, but when Zemeckis heard it, he said it wasn’t optimistic enough. So I went back to the guys and we worked on it.

Johnny Cola, our saxophonist, participated in this arrangement. In the original rendition, the bridge chords occur twice and the song begins with a verse in a minor key. Johnny had the idea of ​​reducing it to just one bridge, and he also came up with this big positive major-key three-chord intro. I did my lead voice on a few takes.

When we released The Power of Love, it was the most added track on radio in its first week and in heavy rotation. The interesting thing is that the film holds the record for the shortest period of time between the end of principal photography and the release of the film: nine weeks. While “The Power of Love” was topping the charts, the studio kept yelling at Zemeckis: “Get the movie out there; the song is killing it!” Thus the release date was brought forward.

People forget that at the time we actually had a higher status than Michael J. Fox and Bob Zemeckis because we had hit records. The advantage for us is that this was our first big international success because the film was a huge hit everywhere. It has enabled us to tour in Europe and elsewhere.

Chris Hayes, songwriter, guitarist

Like all of my writing, The Power of Love is written episodically. I had a real basic recording setup at my house, and I sat on the couch in my pajamas one night, played the guitar, and came up with the chord progression. It was based on a really simple guitar riff and something that was as poppy and accessible as I can get.

It was all about using the right guitar parts and getting something kind of catchy. In the bridge section, it’s kind of gospel-inspired. I threw in some chords that were a little different than the usual chords you would put in a song like this. It was my return to music theory classes and the roots of jazz/gospel. When it came to his guitar solos, he was kind of inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

When I wrote it, I had no idea what it would become or how popular it would be. It ended up becoming an integral part of the whole Back to the Future franchise, and it’s the biggest song of our career, and it gave us the No. 1 spot, which was exciting. But the strange thing is that the song has nothing to do with the movie at all. We were given a synopsis of the script, and I read the whole thing and I remember thinking to myself, “This doesn’t seem plausible or this is going to be good.” And boy was I wrong!